Abstract
This research investigated the perceptions of the faculty members at colleges of education around the world about instructional interactivity by specifically undertaking a comparative analysis of the key aspects surrounding the functional definitions of interactivity, the existence of interactivity in various instructional settings, the attributes of interactivity as a function of motivation and learning theories, and the events of interactivity to discern any relationships that might exist with respect to the eight predictors; gender, age, present status, highest degree obtained, geographic region, research interest in interactivity, personal learning preferences (the strength of the VARK score), and department. The study was based on an online survey investigating instructional interactivity. The content and reliability analyses of the survey instrument indicated high degree of internal consistency and validity among the items. Two-thousand-seven-hundred-fifty-two of 14792 faculty members completed the survey, for a response rate of 18.1%. Findings indicated that the faculty members perceived all presented instructional events in various settings from moderately high to high interactivity. In addition, the perceptions of faculty members about instructional interactivity varied with their personal characteristics that were mentioned above as predictors. This result indicated that interactivity was context dependent, stemming from various factors. Also, the ratings of faculty members strongly associated interactivity with learning theory (Conditions of Learning) and motivation (ARCS Model). This study is important since at present there is no settled view of what interactivity and interaction mean in education context and owing to this fact information available in the literature on research into the complex phenomenon of interactivity and interaction is rather limited. And, despite this limitation, interactivity and interaction are attributed to be critical in promoting and enhancing effective learning.
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